Month: June 2021

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Are Your “Managed Services” Truly Managed?

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For many organizations, one of the common challenges when it comes to IT is how much can be managed in-house. Your IT team has priorities, but as your business grows, it’s likely that your IT needs will evolve along with it. Allowing a managed services provider to shoulder some of that responsibility grants you the freedom to focus on what your business does best while letting the experts nurture your office’s everchanging demands.

A Managed Services Provider (MSP) is a third-party IT service provider that manages systems and services for an organization.  An outsourced Help Desk is the most common type of MSP, but managed services come in many flavors and forms, providing niche support across almost all industries.

Within the information technology industry, managed services may include help desk support, endpoint/server/storage management, network monitoring, security, and cloud services.  Outside of IT, managed services may also involve audiovisual services providers, supply chain and logistics management, marketing, media, and transportation services

The Break/Fix Model

Most providers offer a “break/fix” service model—when something breaks, the customer calls their provider, and the provider fixes the issue.  Though this fee structure is simple, the cost for the customer and the revenue for the vendor can be quite unpredictable.  

Some providers may offer proactive break/fix plans. These plans have the same structure except the customer pays a reoccurring monthly fee rather than accruing one-time charges. Because work is billed hourly, this structure can cause clients and providers to be short-sighted to ongoing problems, ultimately incentivizing short-term, quick fixes opposed to cost-effective, lasting solutions.  

Since the MSP market took off in the mid-2000s, many service providers have been quick to add the word “managed” in front of any service they offer. So how can teams and companies know who is offering a true managed service?   If you find yourself in the same situation, here’s what to look for.

Two Key Elements of A Managed Services Provider

Proactive Services

An MSP aims to provide a stable, predictable service by adding proactive management and services meant to eliminate or significantly reduce the number of unexpected issues that might occur. For example, frequent application updates should result in less bugs, routine hardware scans for problems will have a lower chance of equipment failing during production hours, and patched systems should be less vulnerable to security intrusions.

Is everything running well and you haven’t needed to call your MSP in a while? Congratulations! Your MSP is probably doing their job right and everything is running the way it should be – nothing to break-fix here.

Service Level Agreements

Besides being proactive, every successful MSP will offer and adhere to Service Level Agreements, or SLAs, that ensure the service meets expectations. SLAs clearly state the performance metrics and responsibilities of the vendor as agreed upon in the service agreement. SLAs need to be qualitative –they need to be measurable to ensure that expectations are clear between the customer and the service provider.

If your business has critical systems that operate 24/7, does your current service provider include a 24/7 SLA to help you when you need it? Will your business thrive with a 95% system uptime? In other words, can your systems go down once every 20 days?

It is critical for your business that the MSP’s SLAs fit your business needs. If you find yourself with inconsistent or unclear SLAs, it might be time to re-evaluate your service provider.

Need Some Help?
Need some help reviewing your current service agreement or just want to see if there are better options out there? VPLS might just have the right managed solution for you! VPLS consistently ranks as a top Service Provider and Managed Service Provider among competitors. From Help Desk to managed SOC and security services, VPLS has an array of manages services catered to organizations big and small. Contact VPLS for a free custom quote today.

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What Businesses Can Learn from the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack

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As Colonial Pipeline returns online after a several-day outage resulting from a cyberattack that instigated a nationwide gas price surge and multiple states to experience shortages, business leaders across industries are left questioning their cybersecurity practices. There is no single solution to prevent a ransomware attack like the one on the largest refined oil pipeline in the U.S., but that doesn’t mean that preventative cybersecurity measures should be put on the back burner.

Security Awareness

Stay one step ahead of hackers with informed security awareness

Ransomware attacks have surged by over 80% in the last few years and a minimum of $18 billion was paid in ransoms alone, while the price of downtime added billions more in costs1. Expert studies show that the most common attack vector for ransomware is email, with infection occurring from a user unknowingly clicking on a malicious link or attachment2. At a minimum, the malware locks the company out of their own systems until a ransom is paid; then the hacker provides a “key” to the victim so they may regain access to their file and resume operations. However, double extortion and even triple extortion strategies are common these days. This is where the threat actors will exfiltrate the data before encryption, and then threaten to leak the company’s stolen data, or the data of their customers, unless their demands are met. 

The first step to preventing ransomware attacks is educating yourself and your employees of the latest tricks that hackers use to infiltrate your network. Security awareness training companies, such as KnowBe4, go above and beyond a stale slideshow and create simulated ransomware and other common attacks on your employees, leaving your workforce more confident to spot a phishing email or domain spoof before they have a chance to permeate your workplace.

Managed Security

Properly managed security is vital to ensure protection

Configuring security measures such as firewalls are just the first steps in staying protected against cyberattacks. As time goes on though, and users adjust permissions, install new software, or open new ports, for example, gaps in the management and maintenance of security systems leave a once-secure system newly exposed to hackers. Solutions like VPLS’s managed security services protect companies all the way from the cloud to the endpoint, relieving business owners of the burden of staying compliant with patching policies and standard configurations, and ultimately ensuring the security measures put in place stay secure over time.

Zero Trust Network Access

Secure distributed environments

Since the start of the pandemic, the need to distribute workplace environments remotely increased rapidly. The tools used to grant access to users remotely are often designed for easy use rather than optimized security. Once an infection occurs, inadequate segmentation between environments permit the spread of the virus laterally within the network. By isolating and segmenting, organizations will be able to cease further spread of ransomware across systems. This has led to the rapid adoption of a methodology known as Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). VPLS is an industry expert when it comes to transitioning clients to this new model for security.
Key Takeaways

Companies of all sizes across all industries are at potential risk of a ransomware attack.

Cybersecurity today needs to be the primary element of all disaster recovery policies even for organizations that don’t identify themselves as a natural target. The question companies should be asking themselves is “when” an attack will take place rather than “if.” Incidents like the Colonial Pipeline crisis have unfortunately become all too common, making it imperative that organizations take the necessary measures to stay informed and prepared to handle such situations. Better security awareness training, leveraging the power of 24×7 managed security services, and securing distributed environments are just some of the takeaways industries can learn from the Colonial Pipeline disaster.

Is your business prepared to protect itself from sophisticated threats? Check out VPLS’s How to Prevent Ransomware—A Technical Checklist.

  1. Emsisoft, Report: The cost of ransomware in 2020. A country-by-country analysis, February 2020
  2. Sophos, The State of Ransomware 2020, Whitepaper, May 2020

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VPLS Featured on CRN’s 2021 Solution Provider 500 List for Third Consecutive Year

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VPLS is excited to announce that CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, has named VPLS to its 2021 Solution Provider 500 list. CRN announces its top 500 solution providers list each year, ranking the leading IT channel partner organizations across North America by revenue. This year’s impressive list represents a remarkable combined revenue of over $403 billion, underscoring the immense impact and influence these partners have on the IT industry today.

VPLS moved up 48 spots to #315 on CRN’s 2021 Solution Provider Top 500 List due to the company’s continued dedication to providing complete cloud-to-edge services to their clients while delivering best-in-class professionalism and industry experience. As a partner, VPLS continues to expand its team and portfolio to support its clients’ IT needs globally.

“CRN’s Solution Provider 500 list serves as the industry standard for top-performing technology integrators, strategic service providers, and IT consultants, which makes it a valuable resource for technology vendors looking to partner with today’s best-of-breed IT solution providers,” said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. “On behalf of The Channel Company, I’d like to congratulate these companies for their incredible contributions to the growth and success of the IT channel.”

The complete 2021 Solution Provider 500 list is available online at www.CRN.com/SP500 and a sample from the list will be featured in the June issue of CRN Magazine.

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